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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23995564">hold me like we're going home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumenera/pseuds/lumenera'>lumenera</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:20:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,560</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23995564</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumenera/pseuds/lumenera</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nevermind the gaps in his memories. Nevermind the fact that he isn’t sure where he is, and when he tries to think about it, but all he gets is the fleeting sensation of suffocating familiarity. He knows this place and he doesn’t. He can read the signs and he can’t. He knows the people around him, but at the same time, they are all just unfamiliar faces. Nevermind all of those facts.<br/>Who is Iwaizumi Hajime? What does he mean?<br/>Tooru doesn’t know.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Iwaizumi Hajime &amp; Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hold me like we're going home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><i>hold me like we're going home<br/>turn your tears to rain<br/>bury me beautiful<br/>heaven knows how I loved you </i><br/><br/>Title taken from Five For Fighting's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPPUB1JpsQ">Heaven Knows</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Iwaizumi. He has to find Iwaizumi. His eyes dart around, landing on all the passerby, people walking, living their normal, daily lives, with not a single recognizable soul among them.</p><p>Where is Iwaizumi Hajime?</p><p>He turns in circles over and over again, spinning, <em> searching </em> for a boy with dark, spiky hair and sharp, intelligent, sage green eyes. A boy with toned arms and tanned skin, a boy who answers to the name Iwaizumi Hajime. He knows something is missing from his life, but the only thing on his mind is this one person. It has to be him.</p><p>Nevermind the gaps in his memories. Nevermind the fact that he isn’t sure where he is, and when he tries to think about it, but all he gets is the fleeting sensation of suffocating familiarity. He knows this place and he doesn’t. He can read the signs and he can’t. He knows the people around him, but at the same time, they are all just unfamiliar faces. Nevermind all of those facts.</p><p>Who is Iwaizumi Hajime? What does he mean?</p><p>Tooru doesn’t know.</p><p>He searches for hours for a face in the crowd. Rain drips from the sky, mingling with the tears the boy sheds for his loss. No one takes notice of the boy amidst the sea of people.</p><p>Life goes on, and the city keeps moving forward.</p><p>(“You’re such an ugly crier.”)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>His memories are starting to return to him. Aoba Johsai in turquoise and white. Green, red, and white striped volleyballs, some blue and yellow. His teammates, Makki(Peach hair) and Mattsun(Dark eyebrows). Yahaba(Light hair, his junior setter) and Watari(Buzz cut, libero) and Mad Dog-chan(Surly, shaved lines, bleached hair, powerful). Kunimi-chan(Smart kohai) and Kindaichi-chan(Spiked hair kouhai).</p><p>Opposing teams. Shiratoriwaza, with their Ushijima(Ushiwaka-chan, left handed, bone breaking spikes). Karasuno, with their Chibli-chan(Lots of energy, orange hair) and Tobio-chan(Genius). The thought of any of them makes Tooru’s blood boil. Geniuses make him sick because he is not a genius, just an average human being who worked hard to get where he is now.</p><p>Most of all, he remembers Iwaizumi. Iwa-chan. His vice captain, his ace, his wing spiker. Everywhere Tooru turns, it’s like he’s there. Kitagawa Daiichi. Aoba Johsai, his neighborhood, his entire life.</p><p>He was right. Something was missing from his life, and it was Iwa-chan. <em>His</em> Iwa-chan.</p><p>It felt like volleyball was all he looked for in a life he barely remembers now. Volleyball and Iwa-chan, Iwa-chan and volleyball, two things that have felt entwined in his life since the beginning of time.</p><p>So where is he now? (Why can’t Tooru find him?)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Iwaizumi went down one day in practice. Two spikers come up to the net. They don’t need to talk, they just <em> know</em>. Tooru sets the ball for him, like usual. A long arc, coming up right over the net, near the antennae. The best one he can do, one he's perfected over the years, because it's Iwaizumi's favorite toss.</p><p>But for the first time in their ten years of playing volleyball together, Iwaizumi doesn’t spike it. And when his feet touch the ground, he collapses in a heap, his head hitting the ground with a <em>thunk</em>.</p><p>All motion in the gym ceases. Heads turn towards the sound.</p><p>“Iwa-chan!!”</p><p>His voice breaks on the name.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He knocks for what seems like hours at the Iwaizumi household, but no one comes to answer the door. He peeks in on practice during his temporary ban. </p><p>(“I don’t want to see you here, Oikawa, until that ankle has healed.”</p><p>“Yes, Irihata-san.”)</p><p>No Iwaizumi. Instead, Makki and Mattsun are leading practice, acting diligently for once in their lives, it seems. The coaches watch from the sidelines. He ducks when one of them glances up at the upper railing. Tooru doesn’t feel like getting kicked out today. He studies Yahaba’s sets, resolving to let the younger boy know a few things that he needs to fix, and the other things that he needs to know when he becomes captain. Seijoh will be no less worse for wear when the third years graduate. He’s proud of them, and what the team is becoming.</p><p>Strangely enough, when he walks away, he feels no pain in his ankle. Tooru could probably return to practice soon. He needs to catch up.</p><p>Iwaizumi never shows.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He tries the Iwaizumi house again. Someone’s home, he’s sure of it; he can see the car in the driveway port. The house is silent, like a ghost. The stars twinkle down on him from above. He names each one while he waits for someone to come to the door. Sirus. Canopus. Rigil Kentaurus. Arcturus. Vega. Capella. Rigel. Procyon. Achernar. Betelgeuse. He knows all of their positions by heart, from all the hours spent stargazing with Iwaizumi on warm summer nights. Polaris is harder to see, because it's not actually the brightest one, Tooru recalls. But he finds it anyway, because for some reason, Iwaizumi deemed it his favorite.</p><p>Still, no one opens the door.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Iwaizumi in the hospital, struggling to breathe. His lungs are injured, and if he doesn’t get a replacement one, he’ll stop breathing and die. Tooru doesn’t tell him, but he goes in to test for organ donation. He’s a match. They put him under anesthesia and when he wakes up, he’s in a hospital bed of his own. Iwaizumi is next door, and the doctors seem pleased with the end result. The lobe is taking nicely. The body hasn’t rejected it so far, so it looks like a success.</p><p>He would have donated anything, a thousand times over. Anything for Iwaizumi.</p><p>Tooru hasn’t had a sprained ankle in months. He was perfectly healthy; he had to be, to donate.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He peeks into Iwaizumi’s class, noting the empty seat. His teacher’s eyes sweep over him, like it’s a normal day, a normal sight. Tooru figures he is. He’s badgered Iwaizumi enough times to be a standard presence by now.</p><p>It’s not like him to be missing. Makki and Mattsun are in Iwaizumi’s class too, but both of them look more subdued than usual. He figures it’s not worth bothering them over. They’ll just make fun of him for being lovesick, and besides, as his neighbor, he’s more likely to know where Iwaizumi is then they do.</p><p>After the bell rings, signaling the class is about to start, a broadcast is issued. “One of our students has died after a lung infection, third year--”</p><p>He can’t bear to listen to anymore of it. Iwaizumi is the only one that he knows is missing. He claps his hands over his heads, screaming to drown out the name. He won’t listen to them say Iwaizumi Hajime, he can’t. He can’t.</p><p>He runs from the school. No one watches him go, too caught up in their own grief.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He was told there were complications with the surgery, in the white pristine hospital room. The floor swayed from underneath him, and he caught himself on the side of the chair. <em>His first thought was,</em> <em>Hajime</em>.</p><p>That’s the last thing he can remember.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He runs. Going anywhere, really. It doesn’t matter where his feet take him. He could run to <em> Sendai</em>, for all he cares. The pain feels like the aching in his knee, but amplified by a million and all over his body.</p><p>Iwaizumi Hajime is gone, a part of himself that he will never get back. An irreversible change that Oikawa can’t undo, can’t go back in time to counter, can’t do anything about.</p><p>His feet take him to the graveyard. Some sort of sick joke, to prove a point, to dig the nail in his heart deeper, perhaps. It’s the one closest to their neighborhood. He and Iwaizumi spent countless days near it, because the deepest part of the river wound by the graveyard, and the bugs that Iwaizumi wanted to catch lived near water--Tooru’s breath catches, and the pain returns to stab itself into his heart again, twisting, driving the agony deeper. Nostalgia overwhelms him.</p><p>His brain refuses to believe that Iwaizumi is dead.</p><p>The graves at the end of the field mark his destination. The Iwaizumi and Oikawa family graves are next to each other, because both families have lived in Miyagi for generations. His legs tremble as he walks toward the grave, kneeling down so he can read the words. The name stares back at him. <em> It couldn’t be</em>. <em> It didn’t make sense </em> . It didn’t make sense in the slightest. <em> Not when Iwaizumi Hajime was dead but </em>---</p><p>Footsteps crunch in the gravel behind him, slow and steady. Methodically, like someone’s concentrating really hard on where they place their feet down. Tooru turns and <em> hope blossoms </em> and--</p><p>“Iwa-chan! There you are! I’ve been looking for you.” He doesn’t know how Iwaizumi knew to look for him in the graveyard, but he doesn’t care. Iwaizumi is here and that’s all that matters. He’s safe, he’s not dead, that’s all that matters. “This grave is really stupid joke, you know. It’s not funny at all, who’s idea was it? A stupid, expensive joke. Reverse it. If it was Makki’s or Mattsun’s, I’m gonna kill--”</p><p>Iwaizumi passes right through him. Tooru stumbles back a few steps, even though it didn’t hurt, but he feels the chill run through him. He whirls around, keeping his eyes fixated on Iwaizumi.</p><p>“Iwa-chan?” There’s a tremor in his voice now. Tooru doesn’t know what’s happening.</p><p>There are tears in his best friend's eyes, and he’s trying to blink them away. He draws out a bouquet of three-petaled purple flowers and places them in a small vase next to it, arranging the flowers so that they're less bunched up. “Hey, Trashykawa.”</p><p>Tooru’s breath catches. He reads the grave again. Not the Iwaizumi family grave, but the one right next to it. It’s real.</p><p>His own name stares back at him, etched in stone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“You weren’t supposed to be the one who died, you know that?” Iwaizumi tells the grave. “It was supposed to be me.” He brushes the tears that reformed with the sleeve of his turquoise and white Aoba Johsai VBC jacket. “Self sacrificing idiot. Stupidkawa. Idiotkawa.”</p><p>He opens his mouth to protest the nicknames. The last thing he was trying to suppress rushes back to him, like a bucket of cold water dropped over his head, and shivers despite the fact that he isn’t cold.</p><p>“I hope you know my lungs are perfectly fine now. You saved my life.” Iwaizumi says, bending his knees to the ground, unable to hold back the tears that follow. “I’ll never be able to repay you, you know?” His breaths are choked between sobs. “If you were here, you’d tell me that I’m such an ugly crier.”</p><p>Oh, <em> Hajime </em>.</p><p>Tooru can’t hold back his own tears. “Iwa-chan, it’s because you are an ugly crier.”</p><p>“I hope you like the flowers. Irises are supposed to mean long lasting friendship. I would have gotten you Peruvian lilies, but I couldn’t find any.” Iwaizumi gestures to the flowers.</p><p>Tooru sniffles.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The complication in the surgery was his, not Iwaizumi. When they removed the lobe, it damaged the surrounding tissue. Permanent damage.</p><p>When did he die? He isn’t sure. Sometime between his failed surgery and now, he supposes. The memories of that time are all blurry and just out of reach, like he’s holding out his hand and they brush past, fleeting and fluid between his fingers.</p><p>He can see Iwaizumi in his hospital bed, looking more frail than all the years Tooru has known him, the machines beeping in time. Iwaizumi is hooked up to far too many for his liking. For all the things he is, Iwaizumi Hajime is not supposed to be frail and fragile. He was always the stronger one between the two of them. Tooru can hear each labored breath. He can see the lines on the heart monitor rise and fall, the glowing screens that he can’t read and knows nothing about. He can see his own hospital bed where he was supposed to recover. He can see the doctor who tells him about the damage, something they didn’t account for because of the low chances of it happening. <em> Most donors aren’t usually your age</em>. The infection.</p><p>He went to sleep and never woke up.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>To be honest, that explains the lack of pain from his knee. Why he remembers having an ankle injury but can freely walk on it.</p><p>It explains a lot of things. Why people’s eyes pass over him like he’s not there. Because he isn’t there. Why no one looks at him anymore.</p><p>The only person he physically exists to is himself.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I never got to say thank you, and I hate that. I hate that you won’t graduate, and I hate that you don’t get your last chance to go to Nationals and I hate that--” A fresh wave of tears overtakes Iwaizumi, and he puts a hand on the gravestone to steady himself, tracing over the kanji of Oikawa’s name. “I hate that I have to lead our team without you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"Iwa-chan has to be my vice captain, sensei. I won't have anyone else."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Very well. Iwaizumi-kun is a good choice, anyway. Has a level head about him."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Thank you, Irihata-san. We won't let you down, I promise!"</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Iwa-chan, I--” He stops when Iwaziumi continues to talk.</p><p>“Hanamaki is my vice captain. He’s doing a pretty good job, actually. A lot better than I thought. Your death, it, it hit the team hard. They all came to your funeral, you know. Even Kageyama and Ushijima came to pay their respects.”</p><p>Tooru almost snorts at the idea of Ushijima coming to his funeral, probably to say one last time that he should’ve come to Shiratoriwaza, and to address Tooru’s so called worthless pride, but then sobers up because it’s <em> his </em> funeral. He’s dead. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet for him yet. He’s dead. But no matter what <em> Ushiwaka-chan </em> thinks, his pride isn’t worthless. In fact, it’s far from it.</p><p>Iwaizumi laughs sadly, the corners of his mouth turning up for a quick second. "Kageyama brought you a volleyball. He's a little bit of an idiot, you know? But he said it was your favorite kind. I didn't know he paid that much attention. I brought it home. If it was kept here, I'm pretty sure someone would've thrown it out."</p><p>His fingers brush the smooth stone where Tooru's name is etched. “Thank you, Oikawa Tooru. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”</p><p>“No. Thank you.” Tooru says, but Iwaizumi doesn’t hear him. With a pang, he realizes that Iwaizumi will never hear him again.</p><p>“I love you, Tooru. We’re going to win Spring High for you, okay? I promise.”</p><p><em> To be honest, this wasn’t the worst way to go </em>, Tooru thinks. He saved the boy he loves the most, and his death was pain free. He would’ve done it again in a heartbeat if it meant that Iwaizumi lived. And again and again and again. “I love you too, Iwa-chan.”</p><p>He arranges his arms around Iwaizumi as best as he can so that they’re sort of hugging, even if Iwaizumi doesn’t realize it.</p><p>The two boys sit there until the sun sets.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Oikawa Tooru</em>
</p><p><em>20 July, 1994 - 4 June </em> <em>2012</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>In Japan, they do graves slightly differently, so I tried to make it as accurate as possible, but it didn't quite fit the story, so it's a mix between Japanese and American customs. I'm not sure how they do funerals, however. Is this where I hand you a tissue? </p><p>Thanks for reading x<br/><a href="https://lumenera.tumblr.com">tumblr</a> || <a href="https://twitter.com/lumenera_">twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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